1915 yearbook provides a window to the past

A recent discovery in a Nevada storage shed has led to the finding of a 102-year-old yearbook.

Bill Leggett, the admin for the Roswell High School Class of 1963 website, received an email from a man whose stepfather’s father was a Roswell High graduate. While cleaning out his stepfather’s shed, the man stumbled upon a Roswell High School yearbook from 1915, two years after the school was founded.
“He emailed me and asked, ‘Would you like to have it?’ and I said, ‘Yes, of course!’” Leggett said of the discovery. “The book was remarkably well-preserved for being so old.”
Leggett contacted the Roswell Independent School District to inform them of this fascinating find. “They lost it,” they said. ‘We don’t have one of those’ and they asked if I could have it, so I sent it to them,” Leggett explained.
The yearbook has been donated to the Roswell Independent School District by the RHS Class of 1963. The school district is currently in their possession of the book after it was sent to them by Leggett, adding to the collection of older yearbooks that are currently in possession.

The contents of the yearbook certainly encapsulate the time in which it was created, giving a more personal view of a very different time. “It talks about World War II, it talks about whether they’d have a football team, if there were enough players,” Leggett says.
Since the school was founded only two years previous to the publication of the book, it is smaller and much less colorful than today’s El Coyote yearbooks. The age of the book shows in the language used by the staff and in some of the senior profiles.
“Inez is always on hand where the good time is. She was not behind the door when the brains were handed out, and she knows how to use them,” says a senior profile for Ms. Inez Holland. “We have missed his smiling countenance and ‘aw now Sadie, listen to reason’,” says another, this one for Mr. Langford Keith.
“I once heard they tried to imitate me in the Roswell High School, but I imagine they make a pretty bad job of it,” says a humorous article titled ‘As a Coyote Sees Himself.’ “I sometimes think I shall pay a visit to that institution and give them a few ideas as to what I am like.”
Leggett confirms that the book has been received by employees of the Roswell Independent School District in the name of the Class of 1963, and it is currently in their possession. It is unclear what will be done with the book, but it is certainly comforting knowing that this piece of history is back in Roswell where it was created.